“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives,” Vance added. “But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
The US ranked 26th in the world when it comes to free speech, with several members of the European Union higher up the list, according to the 2024 Global Expression Report.
😑 I’m going to have to disconnect from the news more often moving forward
most of europe explicitly does not have free speech, because it’s commonly understood that harmful speech exists. i don’t know what he’s trying to convey with that idea but he comes across as misinformed, and not a little bit controlling (“should”)
American here! Its because this is all rhetoric for the idiots that follow him. He doesn’t care if Europeans see him as an idiot, he cares that the idiots here see him as big brained. And the rubes eat up anything that has “free speech” in it because they generally interpret that as “its OK to be racist and misogynistic, its my right because freedoms!”
Hope this helped explain.
And probably also explains why I want to leave.
Not sure how Euros haven’t figured out that the main thing America inherited from Britain is our ability to not give a fuck what Continental Europeans think about us. Not sure why Euros keep thinking they can shame or guilt Brits and Americans into doing what they want.
Where are “Euros” shaming or guilting Brits and Americans here…?
What do you mean by ‘euros’? Do you think 44 different countries have the same views?
The important thing is, that in Europe free speech is normally defined as the freedom to say everything as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else. This is also with a lot of different forms of freedom. Your freedom ends where the freedom of others begin.
And that is the proper definition imo. Other people are not NPCs, you are not the main character🤷
That also exists in the US under libel. You can’t say anything you want if it harms someone, unless I’m mistaken.
But that takes a lawsuit, which takes money. As such, it’s really only a law to prevent the poors from speaking ill of the powerful.
Americans always freak out when they hear Canada has hate speech laws and claim they’re anti free speech.
Most of us don’t ever need to worry about hate speech laws, because most of us aren’t going around calling for violence and open bigotry against entire ethnic groups.
Not accepting hate speech, in particularly inciting violence is not contradictory to free speech in my opinion.
We should not follow the US idea, that speech is only free, if any vile poison can be spread. In the context of Musk that is also ironic, as he is using his powers to censor people.
I think it’s clear that we can never rely on the US again in any respect. Absolute chaotic backwater sinkhole of an oligarch fascist state.
We’re on our own.
Maybe it’s good that we know that now.
Now only our politicans have to realise that
I can’t even rely on the US government to value human decency as a native citizen. I’ll keep fighting where I can, but yeah. Good luck.
As an American, I agree. Hopefully the Republicans try to go off the rails enough that the public finally gets convinced that the only way to deal with these maniacs is their own language - violence.
I hope you guys can get through it without anything dramatic happening, but I don’t think the world can afford to rely on the US being consistently reasonable any more. This is genuinely Russia level stuff.
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The people who voted for him unironically ain’t the brightest bulbs. I guarantee they’ll see Tr*mp blame Dems and run with it.
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Even if they do see them going off the rails, there’s no guarantees we’ll be able to do anything about it. For all we know, he could easily turn the country into a dictatorship where nobody gets to vote for anything anymore. As Tr*mp has said before, He’Ll OnLy Be A dIcTaToR dAy OnE (or something along those lines). In English, I’m positive that translates to “Democracy Is Dead”.
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I honestly hope not, although I worry for the US.
The issue is they aren’t going to stop with their plan. Whatever rights they can remove and also reinforce their own political position and wealth, they will do. And if things get far enough in their larger plan, there won’t be the option or ability to fight back, either democratically or otherwise.
The only real hope I see is if they try to go too far too quickly and people realize that if they don’t make a proper stand, then they’ll lose everything.
I think if the people want to fight back it needs to happen pretty soon. Trump already announced military force against „enemies from within“.
Did…did Vance just call European countries “backwoods”? He couldn’t possibly have, right? He’s not that stupid…right?
Bro, you know he’s fucking dumb af.
He graduated from Yale…
fucking LOL.
Hey bud, I have a PhD from MIT (seriously, I do). I can’t tell you how many fucking morons permeate the halls of academia. A guy in my lab once asked me how to convert a flow rate to a pressure. In a fucking lab at MIT. I had to explain to my own fucking advisor that the bullshit rules of thumb one learns in chemistry class are NOT reliable.
Anyone who goes to one of these universities has a certain degree of intelligence and access to wealth. You can certainly trade a little bit of one for the other but only within limits. And I would be extremely careful just labelling him dumb because he’s a populist.
Intelligence is not a binary thing. There’s loads of people in academia that are very good at the specific thing they study but are absolute morons about near everything else. Just because someone has a degree in business or whatever that does not mean they know jack shit about geography.
The guy has a law degree. That means he knows how to form complicated sentences that seem absolutely coherent. And sounding coherent is a large part of his basic business as the VP.
I find it unhelpful to claim he’s “dumb” when in fact he’s an opportunistic, malevolent, populist weasel.
Not only do I think Vance never meant to call the EU “backwoods” (I still think he used it as a comparison), it also doesn’t matter whether he did. He pretty much has the upper hand:
- The most widely-used social networks in the EU are all based outside the EU, and they’re all adversary.
- EU conservatives and right-wingers are already wondering how to kill EU regulation like GDPR, AI act and DSA. They cut into their ability to propagandize. They could also make money kn rhe side getting them abolished.
Finally, no one in the EU would care about slights like this. We have all seen the first Trump presidency unfold. We expect Trumpists to be pompous nationalist douchebags.
Why is that stupid? Europeans are dependent on him now. European leaders will demurely congratulate Trump and him on their victory and hope they won’t be hit too hard by what comes next.
To call a bunch of countries that rank much higher than the States on quality of life “backwoods” is a pretty wild statement. The U.S. is the proudly unwiped asshole of the developed world.
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Facts don’t matter to Trump or Vance. Don’t expect anything in that department. They care about getting ahead or looking like they are.
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In my reading, Vance didn’t call European countries “backwoods”:
“I’m not going to go to some backwoods country and tell them how to live their lives, […] But European countries should theoretically share American values, especially about some very basic things like free speech.”
My paraphrasing of that would be: “There are ‘backwoods’ countries and I expect nothing of them. But European countries must share our values and need to leave our propaganda platform untouched.”
My reading is:
There are ‘backwoods’ countries and I am not going to be telling them explicitly how to live their lives, they should by default share our values and be doing what we do.
With this reading he is using backwood countries as european countries. With the American Republican party, you can safely assume the most offensive interpretation of their sentences because history shows us that they usually mean it.
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I think he means “backwood countries can do whatever they want, but EU countries can’t”
Trump has long shared his disdain for NATO – during his first term, he reportedly privately discussed pulling out of the alliance completely.
Which would at this point not be unwelcomed.
It wouldn’t be fantastic, the UK and France can’t project the same kind of power the US does.
Well, true.
But on the other hand, sanity from not being beholden to a demented child-raping fascist is a big bonus.
*alleged demented, *allegedly child-raping …
It’s not like the us would be out of Europe’s lives though, it would be even more obnoxious as there wouldn’t be any shared standards any more
Is the US power projection at the long term benefit of the EU though? The consistent destabilization of the Middle East for instance brought more tension to Europe as people had to flee from the region. EU member states getting dragged into US wars didn’t help our image in the world either.
When it comes to defense, UK and France have enough nukes for effective deterrent. The EU is also large enough to thwart aggression at its borders and buffer zones like countering the Russian invasion of Ukraine, if the EU chooses to develop and maintain a joint defense infrastructure. Unfortunately that was postponed instead of forwarded after Biden won in 2020 and EU politicians went back to the status quo.
Yep, destabilization of Middle East is a big win for the enabler US against EU - they get influence and oil, EU gets migrant waves to deal with.
“Power projection” isn’t necessary for a strictly defensive alliance.
The fact that a direct attack on one member counts as a direct attack on all members (some of which have nukes) is enough.Unless you’re going to nuke an invading force then many of the smaller or less well equipped NATO member nations are going to rely on the power projection capabilities of the bigger militaries in the alliance, right?
I can’t see how this makes any sense in a geopolitical view.
They aren’t being nice to our oligarch, that isn’t a good enough reason?
X is trumpisms propaganda channel. Can’t have that regulated now can we?
Stop expecting it to make sense.
It makes sense from the perspective that Musk is the new (secret) president of the USA. He paid hundreds of millions to get to this position, now he tries to get profit from it.
Elmo’s going to get fucked and tossed aside like every other asshole that deals with The Idiot. Did you miss the endless list of former cronies who endorsed Kamala, specifically because they worked with this walking personality disorder?
Any time you imagine some “4D chess” explanation, where surely there must self-consistent clever schemes behind this batshit insane nonsense, that is you, as a reasonable person, figuring out why a reasonable person would do something that looks batshit insane. That explanation will never predict future nonsense. These people are exactly as crazy as they appear. The gallingly simple explanation for why this all looks so fucking stupid is that fascism is not rational.
Musk is not the secret president, Musk did not even get elected lile Vance did. Musk will probably get his deregulation commission and some support for Twitter, since that’s a worthwhile propaganda tool. Inasmuch as Trump is steerable rather than just behaving erratically, he is steered by old money and fossil interests.
In international relation rhetoric is policy. Just saying.
Jup, sarcasmitron has a cool video out about the last time trump was president and he makes exactly this point too.
So not only declared JD Ottoman-fucker Vance his incompetence and ignorance of global affairs but also admits being on putins payroll.
That’s hilarious. Vance thinks he can control the EU.
I’m Glad the Owner of those Websites isn’t now a High Ranking Government Official! THAT would be a HUGE Conflict of Interest!
Why are you posting an article from September (= before the US election) now, in November?
So Vance is running the place not Trump?
Actually a little yes. He was chosen because he’s a silicon valley fucker and friends with Peter Thiel. Hence the elon connection.
Vance wasn’t just a stupid pick
Your government, bought and paid for.
“Don’t try to get the government involved in the business of billionaires, unless the government is giving them billions more of taxpayer dollars, or making it illegal to compete with them”
If that threat is even an option to bluff, then unfortunately NATO will likely be going away no matter what :(
I so hope I’m wrong.
Why? If the US withdraws the rest can stay, the framework exists. It’s a matter of reciprocity. NATO/the EU would just need to expand her nuclear arsenal
Yes the US is absolutely the 500 pound gorilla in the room, but if the US manages to burn their relations with their allies, and stuff like 5 eyes would cease, they are essentially blind. The US operates it’s intelligence network at the behest of countries and relies on information sharing just as much.
And with Iran and a LOOOOONG list of groups and people and countries they fucked over, angered, bombed, etc… the US will not see the next 9/11 coming.
The US has a lot of capabilities, but if a group of radicals manage to hijack several planes and bring down your new York landmark and damage the Pentagon, just imagine what better organized and equipped players can do.
Oh, and NATO operates primarily US weaponry, this also has a reason. If the US withdraws from NATO I think we will see cancelled orders and an orders placed elsewhere… within NATO member states.
Nah, if they are dump enough to push it that far there will actually be a coup in the USA.
Those guys that are itching to go and coup or invade countries that do not align with US interests are not going to just allow the US empire to crumple because of Democracy of all things.
Domestically things might not be much better though and it’s possible that the US will resemble pre-Erdogan Turkey. A democracy with the military as a guardian.
Shame, but now we are gonna block greedy tech megacorps even harder!
